Ask the Author Live: James Surowiecki on Procrastination

This week in the magazine, James Surowiecki writes about procrastination. Today, Surowiecki answered readers’ questions in a live chat. A transcript of their discussion follows.

JAMES SUROWIECKI: Welcome, everyone. I’m James Surowiecki, the financial columnist for The New Yorker, and we’re here today to talk about a subject which I unfortunately have all too much experience with, namely procrastination.

Please send me your questions and comments. There are already a few questions in the queue, so I think this is going to be a lively conversation. Let’s get started.

QUESTION FROM RICK MIDDLETON: Did previous generations procrastinate as much as we do today?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: Great question. It’s a bit hard to answer, since things like survey data on procrastination didn’t really exist until the past few decades. But the evidence we have does suggest that while people have always procrastinated, it’s become a much bigger problem in modern times, and in fact it seems to have become a much bigger problem just in the past few decades.

One obvious reason is that the nature of work has changed, so that many more people are essentially being asked to manage their own time, are doing tasks that are more open-ended (as opposed to something like assembly-line work) and are working on projects that are longer-term. All of these seem to be factors that make people more likely to procrastinate.

The other thing is that there are so many more distractions out there these days that if you want to procrastinate, it’s much easier to do. That’s why you’re seeing things like Freedom, the program that blocks your computer from the Internet so you can get some work done.

QUESTION FROM JDOLLENMAYER: A lifelong problem for me, procrastination seems on the wane now that I’m in my 60s. Perhaps the sense that the number of tomorrows is waning swiftly? Any evidence age helps correct this?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: There does seem to be some evidence that as people get older, they procrastinate less, perhaps because they feel the pressure of time more (in effect, the deadline of life becomes more obvious).

Another theory is that it has something to do with maturity, in the sense of impulse control—older people do a better job of managing their impulses, and so they’re better able to put off putting off.

QUESTION FROM READER: How does procrastination manifest itself for you as a journalist?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: Is my editor reading this?

Just kidding—I think my procrastination manifests itself in a couple of ways:

First, I tend to delay writing by doing more research—it’s really the act of writing the piece that I have the hardest time with.

Second, I tend to have a hard time working on pieces long before they’re due. That’s why I think the fact that I write a column is really good for me—the column has to be done, and there’s no getting around it. So I may spend a little more time reading blogs on days when I’m writing, but ultimately I know that I have to get to it. That’s very different with longer pieces, which are easier to drag your feet on.

QUESTION FROM RACHEL: Can you reflect on the relationship between perfectionism and procrastination? Perhaps I leave my sermon writing until late Saturday night because the deadline lets me off the hook of saying “this is good enough” earlier in the week. Sunday morning comes whether I think the sermon is ready or not.

JAMES SUROWIECKI: This is a really interesting question, and one that different students of procrastination would answer differently. It doesn’t seem to be the case that high-achieving perfectionists procrastinate more than the rest of us. People who are really obsessed with producing something perfect often are actually better at starting earlier.

But there are also people whose perfectionism manifests itself in a kind of “this isn’t worth doing if I can’t make it exceptionally good,” and who are therefore wary of working on things that they might mess up. Those people, evidence suggests, are more likely to procrastinate. Procrastination also can be a way of self-handicapping: if you don’t do a great job, you can always say to yourself, “If I’d only started sooner, I’d have been able to produce something excellent.”

QUESTION FROM ROBIN: Is procrastination about fear of failing to do a really good job?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: So that’s an ideal follow-up to the last question, and the answer seems to be, in some cases, “Yes.” People are who aren’t confident in their abilities, or who don’t feel comfortable with our task, are generally more likely to procrastinate, which makes sense: if you’re not sure you’re going to be able to do something well, you’re generally not going to rush to do it.

QUESTION FROM DAVID: Do u think the higher figures reported in procrastination since 1978 are simply—ironically—because researchers and publishers are reporting on it more now—i.e. not procrastinating in their study of this realm?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: There’s probably some of that going on—we’re studying it more and therefore we’re seeing more of it. But I also think that the changes in work and the changes in what you might call the “distraction environment” since the 1970s are very real, and almost certainly have had an impact in making people procrastinate more and making more people procrastinate.

QUESTION FROM FRANCES: Does procrastination only deal with actions?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: Really interesting question. I think that is the way we normally think of it, that procrastination is about what you do or don’t do. But you could make a case that people procrastinate about what they’re thinking, about plans they’re making, etc.. One way procrastination manifests itself is in the way people delay dealing with delay.

QUESTION FROM ELTON SEMELEER: Will I always be a procrastinator?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: This is a question I’ve asked myself many times. There are lots of people who now believe there may be at least some genetic component to procrastination, and even if there isn’t, it seems to be the case that procrastination habits are often set relatively early in life (that’s certainly the case with me). But I also think that there’s lots of evidence that external tools can help quite a bit in getting people to stop procrastinating.

Sometimes these seem quite obvious, but they often are very useful. The key, I think, is to recognize that it isn’t just about saying to yourself that it’s all about will.

QUESTION FROM DAVID: What do u think of Jesus’ adage: “Don’t worry about tomorrow, b/c tomorrow has enough troubles of its own” (Matthew )?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: There’s something comforting in that. I think the problem is that so much of what we do necessarily is about tomorrow, and in fact about time spans that are much longer than tomorrow. So our presents are irreducibly shaped by the future. The question, really, is how you can exist, in some sense, in both realms.

QUESTION FROM SERGEI: I think one way I cope is to perform multiple tasks simultaneously? Do you think this is healthy?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: Most of the work on multitasking suggests that it generally makes you less efficient, not more. In effect, dividing your attention means that neither (or none) of the things you’re working on is really getting the full effect of your intelligence, and that it in the end takes you longer than it would if you did one thing at a time.

Having said that, knowing this has not stopped me from multitasking, and it may well be the case that with simpler tasks (cleaning the house, or whatever), you can do them together and still come out ahead. But I do think to some extent multitasking is a way of fooling ourselves that we’re being exceptionally efficient.

QUESTION FROM DAVID: Did the Founding Fathers allow for too much procrastinating in our federal checks-and-balances, which was responsible for too small a stimulus package last year?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: Well, our constitutional system is set up, in many ways, to make it difficult for the government to act. And there were/are good historical reasons to design the system this way. But it does mean that in times of economic crisis, it is very difficult to respond quickly (at least via the legislative system). And that problem is accentuated by the fact that people are wary of taking action too quickly.

QUESTION FROM CAVALIER: In the article you mentioned Laibson and delays in signing up for a 401k plan. Barry Schwartz’ ”Paradox of Choice” TED talk mentions that perhaps such delays are due to having too many choices (in this case mutual fund options). You also mention something similar at the end of the article. How do you see the number of choices we have impacting procrastination?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: The number of choices clearly does, in some cases, affect how much we procrastinate. In fact, there’s a fascinating study that I allude to in the piece that shows that even giving someone a better choice can actually make things worse, by making it more likely that they’ll end up doing nothing.

The problem seems to be that the more choices we have, the more obsessed we become with making the perfect choice. And rather than make the wrong choice, we end up doing nothing. That’s okay in some situations (where there really are, for instance, disastrous choices that are possible), but in the case of something like signing up for your 401(K), it just means that you’re losing, in effect, free money.

QUESTION FROM GUEST: Is financial procrastination the most dangerous kind that is often practiced? Why do people fail to understand the value of compound interest and savings?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: I think those are two different questions, although they are connected. I think people don’t understand compound interest because typically no one ever explains it to them and the level of financial literacy in the US is very low.

That does make financial procrastination more common—because when people are confused or uncertain, they’re more hesitant to ask—and it also makes it more costly (see Laibson’s work on 401(K)s.) I’m not sure if financial procrastination is the worst kind, but it’s remarkably common, and in dollar terms, its cost annually is extraordinarily high.

QUESTION FROM BENJAMIN BARRETT: Do societies that have limited free time (for example, subsistence farming-based communities whose survival depends on their productivity) have the same notion of procrastination as those of use who live in more modern economies? In other words, is there a relationship between procrastination and free time?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: I think there is clearly a connection between free time and procrastination. The more you have of the former, all things being equal, the more likely you are to procrastinate. That’s why you’ll sometimes hear from people that they actually do a better job of getting their work done when they have a lot of other obligations—in effect, it removes the possibility of procrastinating.

Now, that’s a bit weird if you think about it—if you have a lot of free time, why would it make you work less? But in effect what happens is that the free time makes you think you have more time than you do, and it fools you into wasting hours.

QUESTION FROM DAVID: How paradoxical that the one New Yorker writer who has an article in every week’s issue was the one who took the time to methodically study procrastination.

JAMES SUROWIECKI: There is something odd about it, I guess. But as I said earlier, I think there is a connection there (and this is connected to the previous question about free time): because I procrastinate, having a regular column really helps. In effect, it kind of ties me to the mast.

QUESTION FROM DAVID: Last night on Mad Men, Don Draper had a Ulysses-esque moment when he told his secretary to cut him off after 3 drinks.

JAMES SUROWIECKI: Right—that was another example of someone, like Ulysses, asking an outside person to tie them to the mast. Don knew that he didn’t want to drink (well, more than 3 drinks), but also knew that he wouldn’t be able to stop himself, really. Addictive behavior is kind of the inverse of procrastination: procrastination is about not being able to do what you want to do, addiction about not being able to not do what you don’t want to do (drink, use drugs, etc.)

QUESTION FROM RON KANE: I found the most useful of the theories you covered to be the “multiple selves” concept. It feels like what’s going on in my head when I choose to procrastinate and then later beat myself up over it as another “self” takes over. Do you have any other sources that weren’t mentioned in your excellent article that discuss the “multiple selves” further?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: I agree with this—I think the “multiple selves” theory is the one that seems truest to the procrastinator’s experience, and that makes a kind of theoretical sense, too. The Thomas Schelling essays I allude to are definitely worth reading on the subject, as are Jon Elster’s books on self-binding. And Don Ross, who I mention in the article, has some really interesting work on procrastination and on gambling in which he talks about multiple selves.

QUESTION FROM BRIAN: As a recent college graduate, I witnessed plenty of use and abuse of medications used for cognitive enhancement in disorders such as ADHD (namely sustained concentration). I have read and heard that this is spreading to the workplace as well. How do you think the growing production and use of these drugs will effect procrastination and deadline-oriented productivity?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: The honest answer is that I don’t know. I certainly know people who have used Ritalin and Adderall as a way of improving their concentration and their ability to finish tasks, and some of them say that it definitely had an effect.

At the same time, there are familiar complaints from people who take these drugs, including the fact that they think less creatively on them, that it’s really more straightforward tasks that they’re useful for, and so on.

Regardless, I think it’s clear that drugs that offer the promise of cognitive enhancement and greater work are going to be used in ever-greater numbers.

QUESTION FROM JOHN: What would you say is a good technique to try and quell one’s procrastination of tasks? I always seem to do things last minute, but I am always thinking of starting the task as soon as possible, before the due date.

JAMES SUROWIECKI: Some of the things I talk about in my article may seem obvious, but for many people they turn out to be quite useful. So it is true that breaking tasks down into smaller sub-tasks can be very useful.

Having short-term deadlines as well as long-term ones can also help. And I think David Allen’s work on time management, which essentially rests on the assumption that putting the things you have to do down on paper (or on the computer) can actually make a meaningful difference to the way you manage them, is very interesting.

One of the problems that exacerbates procrastination is the feeling that you have lots of different things to do and no clear sense of which matter more, when they should be done, etc. Allen has some interesting ideas for how to deal with this.

QUESTION FROM BENJAMIN BARRETT: When it comes to overcoming procrastination, is the distinction made between self-imposed deadlines and deadlines that you have to meet for someone else (e.g. a boss, co-worker, or family member)?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: I think this really depends on the person. It probably is the case that for many people, meeting external deadlines is much harder than meeting internal ones. On the other hand, internal deadlines sometimes don’t feel real, and are therefore easy to evade.

QUESTION FROM STERLING DOUGHTY: This is not universally true. Most of my procrastination comes not with things I don’t think I can do, but which I am simply too lazy to do.

JAMES SUROWIECKI: Well said—and this is a useful corrective to the argument (which I’m not making) that all procrastination is a form of self-handicapping or self-sabotage. There are a lot of tasks that we have to do, or are supposed to do, that are just boring or just not compelling enough to get us off our duffs, and we’ll often procrastinate in those situations, too.

QUESTION FROM CHRIS: I found it interesting how you said that the word for procrastination did not enter the English language until the 16th century. Were you able to find any direct correlation between this and some event or major change in human life that occurred around the same time?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: It’s not really clear why this would have happened in the 16th century, although it may have been connected to the Reformation, and the greater attention that started being paid to the idea of a personal relationship with God.

In other words, there was a greater burden placed on the individual to ensure that he was saved before he died (the ultimate deadline). But that’s just a theory. What does seem plausible is that procrastination became more of an issue with the rise of capitalism and then the Industrial Revolution, both of which extended people’s time horizons and made work more complex.

QUESTION FROM DAVID: Is there research that draws a link between certain regional/ethnic/historic cultures and lack of progress from procrastination?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: I haven’t come across much work along those lines. There are certainly cultures that have a much looser relationship with deadlines than others, but it’s not obvious that what people in those cultures do can exactly be called procrastination, since it’s not obvious that there’s any real tension between what they’re supposed to be doing and what they’re actually doing.

QUESTION FROM SAM: If you procrastinate but you don’t feel bad about it because you’re good at lying to yourself—as in, “Well yes I’m cleaning my apartment instead of writing my article, but that’s because I write better when my apartment is clean”—is it still procrastination?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: So this is, in a way, connected to the last question. I’m not sure there’s a true answer to this, but I do think that an essential element of procrastination is the feeling that you’re not working on what you’re supposed to be working on, and that therefore if you’re just adopting a more deliberately casual attitude toward work, we might call you lazy or irresponsible, but not necessarily a procrastinator. But that may just be my peculiar take on the problem.

QUESTION FROM KLEMENS: Is there any evidence that procrastination is not always a negative thing, but that we are endowed with it for our own benefit, e.g. as a protection against a danger we feel intuitively?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: Well, I do think that procrastination evolved in humans for good reasons. If you’re trying to stay alive as a human being on the savanna 20,000 years ago, worrying about what’s right behind that bush is a lot more important than worrying about what might happen three weeks from now.

So there’s a reason we’re biased toward the present, and its “visceral rewards.” And as I say at the end of my article, one of the things that procrastination should make us do is ask ourselves whether what we’re working on is really worth it—in other words, it may be a sign that we’re genuinely wasting our time.

Having said that, I do think, judging from my own experience and from all the studies that have been done, that procrastination takes a real toll on people mentally, and that the big problem with it is that even in cases where we want to do something, some of us have a hard time buckling down and doing it.

QUESTION FROM LAUREN CEVALLOS: I am one of the many college students who has perfected the “art” of scrambling at the last minute. I want to stop relying on my ability to complete things in a short amount of time, but even this awareness fosters little motivation to start assignments early. I think it’s because I’ve always gotten away with it. Why is this attitude so prevalent among college students?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: Well, I do think getting away with it makes it more likely that you’ll keep doing it. College students are prone to it, I think, because of the nature of their work (open-ended, often times not due for weeks or months) and because, in a simple sense, time management isn’t really something they’re probably had much real experience with. I also think that it’s easy to fool yourself into thinking that you work best right at the end, and that you need that buzz of pressure in order to produce your best work.

QUESTION FROM JCARTER: If you can’t stop procrastinating cold turkey though, can you at least procrastinate productively? Like putting off writing a paper, but using that time to draw some sketches or catch up on some reading?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: This is the origin of that great saying: “I need a big project that I can procrastinate on, so that I can get done everything else I need to get done.” I really think there is something to this: finding ways to procrastinate productively (paying your bills or cleaning your apartment while you’re not-writing), is better than wasting time on the Internet.

QUESTION FROM ANDY IN SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA: Are social networks the epitome of procrastination?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: I don’t really know—they certainly are a tool that people use to procrastinate, but they’re also, in some circumstances, really rewarding and engaging.

QUESTION FROM DEBORAH: It seems to me a really dangerous form of procrastination is when people put off annual physical checkups—postpone procedures that can might save their lives down the line?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: This is very dangerous, and I think it’s driven by the fact that people don’t see that anything good can come out of it: if you find out you’re healthy, well, that’s what you already thought/hoped, and if you find out you’re sick, well, that’s terrible news. Of course, this is a disastrous way to think, but it’s a classic thing that people are going to be prone to put off.

QUESTION FROM GOODMACHINE: Are you aware of the theory of procrastination as a construal (near-far) effect?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: Yeah, this is a very interesting idea that suggests that how people think (construe) a problem has a powerful effect on how they act. And I think there’s really something to this: framing effects can be very influential, and to the degree that you can think of a task as close rather than distant, you’re more likely to actually get it done.

QUESTION FROM RYAN ZIELONKA: When writing, do you keep a browser window open or do you adopt the ascetic’s approach, and cut yourself off from the outside world?

JAMES SUROWIECKI: Unfortunately, this is the last question, since we’ve run out of time. There are lots more questions in the queue, which I think suggests how interested people are in this problem.

As far as how I write, I typically don’t adopt the ascetic approach. In part, that’s because I do use the Net for research even as I’m writing (to check facts, or so on). But I think it’s also because I find the possibility of distraction comforting.

But you may be happy to know that over the course of this conversation, I didn’t multitask at all. So there are at least some times when I can avoid distraction.

Anyway, thanks so much for attending this. I really enjoyed it.

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